


Conversations and Cats

by Jenett



Category: Alternity - A Harry Potter Alternate Universe, Harry Potter Alternity - Fandom
Genre: Cats, F/M, Harry Potter - Alternity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 15:16:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4792361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenett/pseuds/Jenett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written as background fic for the <a href="http://hpalternity.com">Harry Potter Alternity project</a>.</p>
<p>A collection of scenes illustrating the relationship between Aurora Sinistra and her next-youngest sister, Sage, taking place between April of Year 4 and May of Year 5.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conversations and Cats

**Author's Note:**

> The specific larger events mentioned are part of Alternity’s canon and discussed with the other relevant players, but minor events, details, reactions and opinions are decidedly hers and not necessarily canon for the universe. 
> 
> The last segment is referred to in [a post from Megan Jones](http://alt-megan.dreamwidth.org/11521.html), where she has received an anonymous birthday gift.

**July 19, 1995**  
It begins with a quick journal note from her sister. Sage. 

_R. Need to talk. My flat, 6pm? Today, please, anyway, if you can. S._

It's the flat bluntness that puts her on edge immediately. 

This is Sage. The rest of them can be a flock of chattering magpies, given the right opportunity. She'll be watching because unless she's very attentive, the patterns go too fast for her to talk and watch at the same time. And Sage will be reading, because that's what Sage does. 

She and Sage are the quiet ones. The ones who insist on doing for themselves.

She has a quick hushed conversation with two of the other student chaperones (which earns her a glare from Dolores and Stint, who have been chatting away throughout this tour of the Protector's Collection themselves) but then she writes back. 

_Can't do six. Half-seven? I'll bring drinks and dessert._

A few minutes later, she gets back the simple _Yes_.

Once she's deposited the students for their evening activity, and she's stopped by the Archetype and she's apparated to Sage's little flat (artsy corner of New London, walking distance to her office in Diagon Alley) she takes a moment for a deep breath and then climbs the stairs to the little flat above a fabric shop, and knocks. 

It's half an hour later before Sage is at all coherent, and her shoulder is soaked, and her lap - and her sister's - are piled with at least three (maybe it's four, they're hard to count, they keep moving) cats. But eventually, Rory gets the difficulty. 

It's like drawing out an infected splinter: infinitely fiddly, both of them knowing that the wrong move, the wrong word could cycle them back to the beginning, with added pain. And Rory goes as gently, as much as she possibly can, untangling. 

Eventually, Sage is curled up on the couch, with a cat curled protectively in every possible nook of her body, her head in Rory's lap, sniffling quietly. They've laid out exactly what her ex did to her, and wanted from her, and said to her. (Fragile, broken, sharp-edged pieces, because he was a bastard, and he did the things that would hurt most at the end, and Rory doesn't know how to explain exactly what he did to her baby sister. Because she is blessedly working on second-hand-knowledge here, of the all the ways people hurt someone deliberately like that.)

She ducks away from the sudden realisation that the bastard ex was making much of her baby sister because of her. Because of her connections with Raz and all the right people, with all the power and the prestige and the shiny glitter that people outside that inner circle assume is all there is. And that the end, when it came, was because Sage wasn't interested in that, and would not use her sister that way even if she were. 

But she has to say something, and so she finally says "What made this come out now?" It's the wrong question, but maybe it's also the right one. Or will get them there. 

There's a minute's more sniffling, and discomforted cats when Sage blows her nose, and then Sage says "Someone asked - I made the mistake, mentioning you were having us for supper, all of us. And someone asked if you were getting married, and shouldn't I be thinking about that. And then they just - it all came back again. And there's those pamplets."

"Oh, Sage. Those pamphlets are trash."

"I know that. They don't even proof them properly. I mean. How can you trust something that has such stupid hyphenation?"

It's a good point. Excellent, in fact. 

And it's that that gets them onto better lines of conversation. They talk through the idiocies of the pamphlets, and Rory makes her sister start giggling at some of the ones she's been getting, about how to entice Raz to propose. But five minutes on, she hears "What's it like with him?"

"Not like Melchior." That being the bastard in question, an immigrant from Canada, trying to be more Protectorate than the Protectorate. That much comes out flat and hard, and then she has to back up. 

"They're not all..." Rory says, and then her voice fades out, because most of them are, even if Raz isn't. 

"But he's a Council Member, Ri. And - Mel… Melchior was always going on about how we had the proper idea, and the sturdiness and the hardness and the drive to … do all the things other countries were too scared to do. And how he was hard and strong and fierce because - because that was what was needed." 

Rory sits there, stroking her sister's hair (and idly petting one of the cats, because it's there, and it is soothing) as she thinks. Finally, she says. "What Raz is like with me is - he makes me better than I was. He listens. It's not that he does everything I say - because, forming stars, who'd want that? Not me. But it's a conversation. Except about his oaths and commitments, there's always space to figure out what works for us, and how. We make each other better, I think. I hope. But that's about me and him, and not categories. Individuals. Not Astronomers and Council Members or Professors but Rory and Raz." 

"Have you with him?" 

And she knows, here, with all the thirty years of being Sage's sister, that it's sex that Sage is asking about. Because of what she's not saying there.

"Yes. Regularly and enjoyably. But he wasn't my first, y'know. Not like - " She stops here, because actually she doesn't know if Melchior was Sage's first. Because they haven't talked about anything terribly personal in far too long. Because she has been an absolutely horrible big sister, wrapped up in her own things. (Even if many of them were in fact, big or necessary or urgent, not just her selfishness.)

"Like Melchior was. And he was, yes." 

"Oh, stars." she says. "I'm sorry. Sorry for a whole lot." She stops then, trying to herd her words into shape and suddenly reminded of that conversation back in the orchard, when they were both a great deal younger and a great deal more innocent, and a great deal less bruised by the world. 

Finally, Sage pushes herself upright - to the complaints of three cats - and pads to the little kitchen and the charm-cooled box, and pulls out a container of ice cream to go with the pastries, and Rory opens bottles of good beer for both of them, and they curl up on Sage's couch, until the world outside has gone dark and mostly quiet, and the cats are purring and draped across their laps. 

It's a rambling conversation, but Rory works out that for all Sage's love of books, she's been reading mostly the wrong things about this. That she never stumbled into the guide that Gramercy recommended, back when, that was practical advice, and how to recognise an abusive bastard when you met one. Sage knew enough not to trust the romances, exactly, but didn't have anything else to fill it in with. And so they talk and talk, and Rory recommends a dozen books with different kinds of relationships, ones that aren't happily ever after, but still have as much happiness as they can hold. 

They are romantics at heart, both of them wanting a forever happy, or at least as much happy as their parents have found (which is a lot), but Rory is more and more pragmatic by the day. And that bruising and that bumping has taught her there's more than one kind of happy, and more than one kind of ending, and some of them she can live with (she thinks) and some of them she knows she can't. And some of them she's not sure about. 

They do work their way around to actually talking about sex. (It is, perhaps, inevitable, given the combination of bad relationship stories, alcohol, and ice cream). She's still not sure how much to talk about her life with Raz, other than making it very clear to her sister that that part of what they have is and has been very good (far better than Melchior, who, it becomes apparent, was entirely out for his own pleasure with a minimum of attention to anyone else in the world, in this and in many other ways). 

But she talks about her past exes, naming no names, about Gordon and Cantus and Cadugan and Chimera. And even about Gilly and Felicity, which surprises her sister and then makes her look entirely thoughtful. 

And this is the first time she's really spelled it out for anyone, all at once, how much she learned from those relationships that has let her have what she does with Raz. Gordon's care that her early experiences be good ones, but without strings. Cantus' joy and exploration. Cadugan's physicality. Chimera's obsessive attention to his goals and how she learned to be with him without imposing on them. And even Felicity (the first time she's talked about that breakup with - well, anyone) and what she learned to watch for in herself, how to find a partner who thought her own passions were a fine thing, not a problem to be worked around and grumbled over and put down. 

At the end, as Rory is untangling herself from the cat (her sister's cats, it turns out, are a small pantheon of obscure Roman goddesses, and Cardea believes every lap is hers), Sage turns away for a moment, and then back, to ask "Do you think your Raz will - I mean, do you have plans with him? Real ones, long term?"

Rory shakes her head. "It's hard." she says. "If he did - he'd have to get Our Lord's permission, and the last person who asked didn't get it. And there's all sorts of - I love him, dearly and deeply, but there's so many things that come with him. Family expectations - his and ours - and his oaths and duties, and all. But..." She stops, and admits, after a moment. "It'd be easier, actually, if he weren't what he is. But he is, and I love him, and he deserves someone who loves him, and not some symbol." And then she takes a deep breath and says "If he asks, I'll say yes. I knew that months ago." 

Her sister nods, and opens her arms (and steps out of the coil of Horta clinging to her ankle with an air of long practice) and they hug. "I'm glad you're happy, Ri." she says, simply. "Real happy, not story happy. I just...."

And Rory nods. "Just want that for you. I do too. I'll let you know if I think of anything." She takes one last look at the little flat, and Aegitas and Aegeria on the couch look back, and she just says "We need to do this more often. The talking, not the tears, I mean." 

Sage nods, and hugs her one more time, then shoos her out the door before the cats get any ideas. 

Rory goes back to her horde of rising third-years, and a dozen petty disagreements that only she can solve (apparently) and all the things she's done badly (Dolores says so), and then to a lonely bed in the hotel and wanting Raz, across the city, and not even having stars to comfort her. She gets up early, and she writes her sister one last brief note, promising a list of books as soon as she can sit down and think. Not saying what she really feels, exactly, which is that she refuses to let that space grow there again. 

**July 20, 1995**  
That afternoon, Sage shows up on the early side, for the family supper at Spence. When Rory opens the door, her sister is clear-eyed. If she is not bright and sunny, she is still a great deal more composed than she was. There's a hug, and a quick whisper of "I asked you, not Di. Don't forget that." 

And when Rory steps back, she's the one who's blinking tears away, and Sage is grinning, and adding "You can't be everywhere, and I didn't ask sooner. Pax?" 

Rory just nods. "Pax always." 

Sage is quiet during supper - that's no surprise. But she helps keep Theo in line with an air of long practice (and a suggestion that she and he have been seeing each other more regularly than Rory had realised.) And she asks intelligent questions about Spence, having read up on some of its pre-Protectorate history, and she and Mum admire the garden a great deal. She talks to Raz like a person (unlike Theo, who is still mostly stuck on Theo, and unlike Temp, who is mostly distracted by the food and bothering the house elves for what's in this and that.) 

**August 12, 1995**  
When they announce the engagement, Sage's response to her owl is a package of books. Exactly the right etiquette book, it turns out. A family history their Auntie Gera apparently recommends. Half a dozen things, each chosen carefully for the life that Rory is walking towards, to help her do that with her eyes open as much as they can be to the hundreds of things she doesn't know and needs to. 

They start writing long owls to each other, an ongoing rambling discussion that's nominally about books, but really about everything under the stars. Sage has begun reading what Rory recommended, and they kick things around, alternating from fiction to non-fiction to plays to the occasional poet (far more Sage's line than Rory's) as the mood takes them. It is deeply satisfying, even while they can't manage to get free the same time that often. 

**April 28, 1996**  
After she discovers two kittens firmly attached to her tower (and often to her), she writes to her sister.

_So, what does one do with kittens? Besides the obvious, I mean. We have rather a lot of them at the moment._

She doesn't hear anything for a day or two - and she barely notices, because while the castle is still swarming with kittens, the larger questions of Cedric's survival, Madam Pinkness (and whether she's really gone), residual blackmail, and a dozen other things distract her. So Rory is somewhat surprised when she gets a sizeable owl hauling a rather large package. 

She opens it, and there's an explosion of small fabric colored… somethings. Quite literally. In moments, she has kittens batting things around her feet, while she's rummaging at what's left, which is a note and a minaturised book. 

The book is - of course - _The Compleat Book of Cat-Related Charms, Spells, Runes, and Other Useful Magical Considerations, 27th edition_. The items are cat toys, she can see, now that not all of them are currently being attacked by kittens. With a charm that keeps them leaping about slightly, she thinks. 

She now begins to understand why Sage likes living over the fabric shop, because her sister has sent five dozen or so, all in entirely different colours and patterns. There are moons and stars, galaxies and planets. Blues and purples and reds and golds and greens and every colour in between. (Except for pink: there are only hints of that here and there in other patterns.) There are fish fabrics and leaf fabrics, and ones that look like dragon scales and flowers and teacups and snitches, and each and every little fabric mouse is different. (And they all have little ears and a little tail, and are weighted just right.) 

She reads the note again, and finds it says

_R -_

_This is a thing you do with cats. It keeps them occupied, and you, too. I doubt even you can worry with a kitten and one of these things. The book's very handy, share it round the school as needed. Sorry it took a day or two. I had friends over to make them last night._

_And someone who - well. Not quite the third date I think he expected, but turns out that making lots of cat toys to startle my big sister was tremendous fun. Talk more soon, but not urgent. Tell me if I can help, right?_

_In the meantime, here's how the charm on the toys works._

The letter continues from there, chatty, though brief, because Sage clearly wanted to get the toys off promptly. 

**May 22, 1996**  
A few weeks later, she is looking at the cats, and thinking about what Pomona had said, and she finds three she'd been saving for something. And wonders what else a toy might do. 

(Though she does not pass on the spell, because she can't figure out how without giving herself away. And she thinks, in this case, a random kindness might well open more doors than a known one.)

But still. 

Kittens. Toys. Innocent pleasures, in a spring where they have all needed many more of those than they got. 

Maybe hope of something better yet to come.


End file.
